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Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 21,677
New York

Originally Posted by fnork

....I for one am fairly tired of the approach to music history where we have one Genius Composer carrying the torch of Western Classical Music until the next Genius Composer comes along and takes it over....A highly talented pianist I know....came across a little-known C minor piece (sonata perhaps, dont remember) by a mostly forgotten viennes classical composer that started with a motif close to identical to Mozart's C minor fantasy. After the closure on the dominant in the 2nd bar, the theme is re-stated one whole-tone down...As far as I remember, it was written in Vienna and pre-dates the Mozart piece by a year or two....

The ever-celebrated and over-performed...Leopold Kozeluch!!! Actually, saying that the motif is "close to identical" was an exaggeration, now that I looked back at the score. The similarity is still rather striking to my mind. Did Mozart hear this piece before he wrote the fantasy? Check the score for yourself:

I would start with the three M's: Mendelssohn, MacDowell, and Medtner. Surprised nobody has mentioned MacDowell yet, as his piano contributions are very accessible and modern-sounding in their simplicity.

Mark_C
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 21,677
New York

Originally Posted by Numerian

I would start with the three M's: Mendelssohn, MacDowell, and Medtner...Then there are the three H's: Handel, Hummel, and Hindemith.Finally anybody who's surname begins with Ch. No, I'm not thinking of Chopin. I'm thinking of Cecile Chaminade and Emmanuel Chabrier.

What about the 3 I's: Ives, and Ippolitov-Ivanov (counts as 2! if only he'd written more for piano).

Godowsky was probably 'somewhat' neglected due to the difficulty of much of his music and the fact that many of them are arrangements (although I'd really consider them compositions). Some of his works are more accessible such as his Corelli arrangements.

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

I said Griffes! His music is pleasant and unique.

I too don't appreciate people judging a composer on how innovative they were. Not that I don't like the modern direction of art music, but I'd love to hear a new piece that is somewhat consonant and using the harmonic language developed over hundreds of years. I don't see the big deal!

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

I like to play the Fountains of Acqua Paola once in a while, after folks have forgotten the last time I played it.. beautiful late-Romantic piece. I don't buy the line that he was just parroting Debussy.. I hear shades of Liszt's Annees more than anything, but the harmonic language is original.

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

I like to play the Fountains of Acqua Paola once in a while, after folks have forgotten the last time I played it.. beautiful late-Romantic piece. I don't buy the line that he was just parroting Debussy.. I hear shades of Liszt's Annees more than anything, but the harmonic language is original.

Nightfall from the same set is also a really neat piece with some cool harmonies. LOVE the changes from 1:15-1:22 here:

I've noticed that more than a few of his works have the Ravel "Le Gibet" thing going on in them with the repeated notes.

Now that keyboard composers of Scarlatti's era are mentioned - how about Soler?

I'd agree - Soler is neglected here at PW.

And in concert, too, although I once did hear someone (Santiago Rodriguez, IIRC) play that extremely obsessive fandango of Soler's in a recital. Well, it was attributed to Soler, anyway...I understand that attribution is not very certain anymore.

Not that I've heard an awful lot so far but he seems to have been very uneven, and perhaps not very innovative either.

There isn't a lot of it to hear, it basically can all fit onto a single CD (and, BTW, Hyperion is releasing just such a CD this month, played by Garrick Ohlsson).

I think I find most of it more interesting and attractive than you seem to. As far as innovation goes, his sonata was fairly innovative, and there's still nothing else quite like it. It was really a terrible loss to music that he died (at age 35) just as he was starting to really find his voice as a composer.

I agree with this about Griffes, especially with regard to his sonata. I find it powerful, painful, poignant, haunting. The only piano music I know that sounds a bit similar in places is Alexander Tcherepnin's first piano sonata, which was completed a year later than the Griffes sonata in 1919. The harmonic language is similar because in these works Griffes mostly uses an 8-note scale while Tcherepnin mostly uses a 9-note scale. Griffes writes using a D minor triad combined with the pentatonic scale on black notes, and Tcherepnin uses three overlapping STS tetrachords. Spelling out both scales from A:

So Griffes uses E flat instead of E natural, and does not have a C natural, compared to the Tcherepnin scale. To my ears, the Griffes sounds more dissonant, and also feels more "rhapsodic", with a narrative sweep more important than structure, while the Tcherepnin sounds more constrained and formal.

Originally Posted by wr

Speaking of innovation, how important is it in determining the quality of a composer's output? Of course, simply developing an individual style is a kind of innovation in itself. But innovation in the larger sense doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for good music. After all, J. S. Bach was never that much of a ground-breaking innovator.

I agree.

By the way, my vote for the most neglected great piano composer on Pianist Corner, who has already been mentioned in this thread, is Grieg. Perhaps this is due to the emphasis placed here on stretching one's technique, and discovering little-known gems by little-known composers. Grieg might seem too common or obvious or "easy" to some. I think he wrote all kinds of gems that are worth exploring, both on their own merits and also to appreciate how influential they were on other late-romantic composers, which I think is also under-estimated. (For example, just listen to Debussy's early choral work La damoiselle élue. Do you think Debussy might have loved Grieg's piano concerto very much, especially the melody, harmonies and progressions of the second theme to the first movement? I do.)

By the way, my vote for the most neglected great piano composer on Pianist Corner, who has already been mentioned in this thread, is Grieg. Perhaps this is due to the emphasis placed here on stretching one's technique, and discovering little-known gems by little-known composers. Grieg might seem too common or obvious or "easy" to some. I think he wrote all kinds of gems that are worth exploring, both on their own merits and also to appreciate how influential they were on other late-romantic composers, which I think is also under-estimated. (For example, just listen to Debussy's early choral work La damoiselle élue. Do you think Debussy might have loved Grieg's piano concerto very much, especially the melody, harmonies and progressions of the second theme to the first movement? I do.)

It's always been interesting to me that Gilels and Richter, neither of whom dabbled much in light-weight music, played hefty chunks of the Lyric Pieces. That's telling, I think.